


smile (for the cameras)

by espressohno



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Charles Is a Darling, Crack, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Erik Being Cocky, Fluff, Football | Soccer, Humor, M/M, at least i hope this is funny, charles being cocky, kind of, the only thing missing from this is actual cock, vague and inaccurate football mentions, why do i write about boys smiling all the damn time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 22:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6826672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/espressohno/pseuds/espressohno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em> “Charles. What are you doing.”</em>
</p>
<p>  <em>“I have some words to say to Erik Lehnsherr.” Charles gasped, tipping the rest of the glass into his mouth. He had to take a minute for his throat to recover. “And I’m not going to say them sober.”</em></p>
<p>really, really stupid cherik football au where charles and erik talk shit about each other in interviews and then actually meet one another and find that they don't hate each other. they really don't</p>
            </blockquote>





	smile (for the cameras)

**Author's Note:**

> sorry guys i had to write this the idea hit me when i was vulnerable and thirsty as hell for cristiano ronaldo

Charles was just barely awake, stumbling through the front doors of the training centre, when a handful of his teammates showed up out of nowhere and shoved an ipad into his face. Once his vision settled he realized he was staring at the face of Erik Lehnsherr, a player for FC Bayern who he had maybe spoken to twice. Whatever it was, it was too damn early for this. 

Somebody tapped the screen and the video played. Translating the interviewer’s German was enough to wake Charles up the rest of the way. 

“There’s been news that Charles Xavier, who plays for Arsenal, has recently signed a modeling contract with Criminal Damage. As someone who was offered a similar contract before and turned it down, how do you feel about other footballers turning over to fashion in their spare time?”

Erik looked thoughtful for a moment. 

“If he were truly a footballer,” he said slowly, “he would have no spare time.” 

Charles squinted at the screen. Some of his teammates around him started snickering. 

“Are you suggesting that signing the contract shows a lack of commitment to his team?”

Erik waved his hand absently before resting his chin on it. He looked utterly bored to be talking about this, which was almost equally as offensive as the shit he was saying. 

“I’d say Charles Xavier is more interested in this modeling contract because it gives him a reason not to commit. Now he can hide his poor footwork and height impairment by calling himself a  _ fashion icon _ .”

“What the  _ fuck _ .” Charles said to the tiny image of Erik. The entire group erupted into laughter. 

The interview was viral by the time their first scrimmage of the day was over, which wasn’t a surprise, because if he knew anything about Erik Lehnsherr it was that he seldom had the patience to sit for interviews and, as a result, half of the world seemed to go crazy at the sound of his voice. 

Charles wasn’t like that. He’d created a reputation for himself as friendly and approachable, even though it was exhausting to be stopped in public almost every day. There were benefits, though, like modeling contracts and a devoted fan base and not a single person with a bad word to say about him. Or so he thought. 

He knew there would be someone waiting for him when he stepped out of the car at his flat that night; he counted on it. 

“Charles Xavier!” A woman called out the second the driver opened the door. He stood up, slung his bag over one shoulder, and smiled. She held the microphone towards him, a huddle of all types of cameras behind her. “Have you seen Erik Lehnsherr’s interview on your modeling contract that was released this morning?”

“I have.” Charles said, working to keep the sweetness in his voice. If he was going to crush this man underneath his feet he was damn well going to do it with a smile on his face. 

“What do you have to say in response?”

Charles paused to smile before the cameras flashed, and then he turned his attention back to the video camera and the woman holding the mic to his face. 

“What’s your name, darling?” He asked. 

“Susan.” She said, slightly confused and more than a little excited at the attention. 

“Well, Susan, I think that if Erik Lehnsherr has anything rude to say about my involvement in the fashion industry, it might have something to do with the fact that his only knowledge of personal style looks like it came from a Google Image search of Cristiano Ronaldo.”

Charles grinned even wider and kept walking. 

 

-

 

Their “rivalry” became famous almost overnight, although Charles wouldn’t call it that because he didn’t even know the man, so he could hardly justify disliking him. But it became easier once others started to join in on the  _ height impairment _ discussion, because Charles wasn’t even that short, for fuck’s sake,  _ there have been shorter men in professional football before _ , and as for the _ poor footwork  _ comment, Charles didn’t even know where to start. 

He stayed up practically the entire night a few days later watching Arsenal matches and Bayern matches and comparing the two of them side by side. Sure, he would admit to an element of clumsiness in the way he sprinted and the way he occasionally almost tripped over the ball in the process of kicking it, but it was never a problem in his success. He didn’t concern himself in making unnecessary movements just for  _ show _ , that kind of thing was for his life off of the field.  

Erik, however, played football like it was some sort of choreographed dance. 

In a very bitter and uncomfortable stream of thought Charles decided that yes, alright, Erik’s movement had a beauty and a grace to it that Charles probably couldn’t conjure, but it was also entirely unneeded in a bloody  _ football match.  _

Now if only it wasn’t for Erik’s god damned talent on the field, Charles would be able to use that against him. 

He huffed and shut his laptop and got about four hours of sleep before he had his first shoot with Criminal Damage in the morning. 

 

-

 

Erik glared at his computer screen. 

“Emma?” He called out. She was probably somewhere in the apartment. 

“ _ What? _ ” She called back. Erik heard footsteps coming towards the living room, where he was sprawled out on the couch scrolling through Twitter. 

“Do you think I’m stylish?” He asked, looking up once she had finally emerged and leaned against the wall of the entryway. She was wrapped in the floral silk robe she always wore when she got ready in the evenings, holding a makeup brush between her fingers like a cigarette. 

Emma studied him for a moment, crossed her arms. 

“Is this about Charles Xavier.” 

It wasn’t really a question. They both knew it was about Charles Xavier, what with the interview fiasco a week ago and the photos from Charles’ first shoot released just hours earlier. Erik had  _ really _ tried to not look at them, but the internet left him no choice. 

“Scoot over. I want to look at them again.” Emma smiled and flopped onto the couch next to him, her white-blond hair spiraling out on the cushions. Erik tried to readjust his legs and begrudgingly clicked on the tab he already had open, with the full spread of  _ Charles Xavier for Criminal Damage _ . 

The pictures made Erik uncomfortable for multiple reasons. Mostly it was because, in every other image of Charles Xavier, he was either wearing his Arsenal kit or dressed in khakis and sweaters like some sort of college student. He was used to Charles looking more like the member of a boy band than a professional footballer, and seeing him wearing street clothes and pouting at the camera with his hair slicked back was making Erik feel a lot of things he did not want to be feeling. 

“Damn, he’s hot, isn’t he?” 

Emma had stopped scrolling at a shot of him wearing light grey sweats that brought almost an inappropriate level of attention to his ass. Erik sighed. 

“Whatever.” 

“You’re blushing.”

“Fuck off, Emma.” 

She snickered and gave Erik his laptop back before standing up. 

“Ok, but seriously.” He caught her wrist before she walked away, “Do you think he was right?”

“Well…” She looked up and down his outfit, which he had put maybe two seconds of thought into that morning. He had to look down at it himself and realized he was wearing Nike and Adidas at the same time. 

“You could afford to be a little bit more...original. Especially with the hair.”

She reached out to fluff the top of his hair. Xavier had been eerily spot on in his rebuttal, which was the most embarrassing part, because Erik had actually printed out a picture of Cristiano Ronaldo for his hairdresser and everyone on his team knew about it. 

He still hadn’t been able to hear the end of it a week later. 

“Never in my life did I expect Erik Lehnsherr to be so insecure.” She said, with a few layers of fake drama. Erik frowned. 

“I’m not insecure.” 

Emma laughed and walked off, back to her bedroom and her makeup table. 

 

-

 

_ Moscow, several weeks later _

 

“Don’t look now,” Hank slipped onto the barstool next to Charles, holding two overflowing beer glasses, “but your new friends from Bayern just walked in.”

Charles squinted at him. 

“I don’t have friends in Bayern.” 

He turned around anyway, and it was easy to spot the cluster of Bayern players based solely on all of the bloody noise they were making. Then his eyes found Erik Lehnsherr. 

Hank seemed to sense the moment Charles realized that Erik was in the bar. He laughed, set one of the beers down in front of him. Charles immediately picked it up and downed half of it in one go. 

“Charles. What are you doing.”

“I have some words to say to Erik Lehnsherr.” Charles gasped, tipping the rest of the glass into his mouth. He had to take a minute for his throat to recover. “And I’m not going to say them sober.”

“This is a bad idea.” Hank glanced back at the booth full of German players. Laughing, drinking, probably-still-sober-enough-to-beat-the-shit-out-of-Charles German players. But at this point he knew there would be no talking Charles out of this. 

“This is a really bad idea.” He said again, louder, sliding his own beer towards Charles. Charles picked it up it gratefully and Hank took his cue to go buy more. 

 

-

 

Erik wasn’t even that drunk. But also, he maybe wasn’t very good at gauging how drunk he was when he was surrounded by people. He always assumed that the noise and the conversation and the pressure to be social was what made him feel lightheaded and overly friendly. And then it would catch up to him and he woke up the next morning hating himself. It had become something of a cycle. 

“You’re so drunk.” One of his teammates--Erik couldn’t seem to focus on his face long enough to figure out who--threw his arm over Erik’s shoulders. The weight and the warmth grounded him, made Erik’s head clear enough to find his words. 

“I’m not even that drunk.” 

He realized he was speaking loud enough for it to be considered yelling. Shit. He  _ was  _ that drunk. 

“Yes you are.” 

“Yes I am.” 

Erik breathed out a laugh. He tried (and failed) to read the label on the beer he was holding, and then it dawned on him that he was drinking Russian alcohol in a Russian bar in Russia. Yeah, he was probably actually really fucking drunk. 

“Look who it is.” His friend--was he Erik’s friend? Was this man even on his team?--turned Erik away from the crowd and towards the bar. Erik blinked at the figures he was supposed to be looking at. If he stared long enough, he figured he would recognize one of them. 

“Is that….is that Charles X _ -whatever _ ?” 

Erik could hear a few different people laughing, which meant, shit, how many people heard that?

The man pulled his arm off of Erik’s shoulders to slap him on the back, almost throwing Erik off-balance. 

“You should go talk to him.” 

If Erik had been only a fraction more cognizant he would have seen that bad idea for what it was: a bad idea. 

But Erik was shitfaced. 

He walked (stumbled) over to the bar. 

 

-

 

The two of them were almost face to face when Charles was sitting on the tall barstool and Erik was standing, half slouching, in front of him. They were both past the point of exchanging words, because Erik had barely enough sense not to shout in a stranger’s face and Charles would have needed about five tries to correctly pronounce  _ Lehnsherr _ . 

So they didn’t speak, they just stared for a minute, as if it were a surprise that one another actually existed.

It took maybe two seconds before their hands were at each other’s throats. 

 

-

 

Charles got no mercy from his teammates in regards to his hangover the next day. All of them had been drinking, sure, but Charles was the only one stupid enough to get intentionally shitfaced and then pick a fight with Erik Lehnsherr. 

Erik had been equally drunk, yes, but that didn’t take away from the fact that he completely decked him. 

There were at least a few concerned glances that morning, and Hank carried around breath mints all day for when Charles (inevitably) kept vomiting, which was really more than Charles deserved. 

His agent yelled at him for about ten minutes, and would have probably killed him at the end had there been photographic evidence. 

The only evidence of the fight was word of mouth and the drunken injuries Erik had managed to give him, a bit of a black eye and some bruises scattered here and there and a cut on his arm, presumably from Erik’s metal watch. The people at physio yelled at him for  _ more _ than ten minutes when he waltzed in sporting all of that. 

Nevertheless, he made it through the day. They had two days until their first match, which was enough time for Charles’ body to recover and for his dignity to at least  _ start _ to recover. 

He was finally hungry again by the end of the day. He ate almost three meals’ worth of food while Hank looked on in horror, swallowed three advil, and stuck it out for another hour to watch the tapes of their scrimmage from that morning with the rest of the team. 

And holy shit, was he playing like garbage. As much as he wanted to excuse himself because he was in bad shape to begin with, it was too terrible. Completely inexcusable. He watched himself fumble around on the screen until, as he remembered, people finally stopped passing him the ball. He hid his face behind his hand as the tape played on. 

Hank told him to lighten up, that he would be a lot better tomorrow when he wasn’t running off the field to throw up every half hour, but Charles was still stubbornly motivated to redeem himself--to himself, mostly. 

He took a nap for 45 minutes at his hotel room and headed to the practice fields. By the time he got there it was maybe two in the morning, which he actually preferred. Charles would probably have the fields to himself. 

He would, unless another player from another team had the same idea. Unless Erik Lehnsherr from Bayern had the same idea. 

They stared at each other with almost the same surprise as the night before in the bar. Charles kept walking towards the field anyway, because he hadn’t just dug through his luggage for clean practice clothes and fumbled through his limited knowledge of Russian with a taxi driver and shown up to practice at  _ two in the fucking morning,  _ only to turn back. Erik just shrugged and waved him over. 

Charles couldn’t remember if they had spoken the night before, couldn’t remember if he knew whether or not Erik spoke English. He only remembered the way Erik’s fist felt against his ribs. 

“ _ You look like shit _ .” Charles was still pretty confident in his German. Erik snorted. 

“You look worse.” Erik responded in English. So that answered that question. 

Charles also couldn’t remember why they had fought in the first place.

“For what it’s worth, I think I hate  _ myself  _ for what happened last night more than I hate you.” He offered. The corner’s of Erik’s mouth twitched slightly in what could have been a smirk. He glanced at the field and then back to Charles. And then, for some reason, said, 

“Do you want to play?”

 

-

 

They made a routine out of it, because somehow the both of them liked to go to the practice fields in the middle of the night. Erik decided that Charles Xavier was actually pretty alright. He really could use help with his footwork, though, Erik had been serious about that. 

But Erik was also willing to be the one to help him with it, whether or not Charles was interested in what he had to say. 

He gave him pointers anyway, and Charles bitched at him for it, and then they would both laugh and pretend that Charles wasn’t starting to take his advice. 

So yeah, Charles Xavier was pretty alright. 

 

-

 

It was due more to the publicity than anything that Charles was pulled away from his team and shoved towards the cluster of Bayern players. From the looks of it, Bayern had the same idea, and he and Erik were standing almost chest to chest on the sidelines of the field. A camera crew rushed up to get a feed of them on the big screen and the crowd started cheering. 

Erik raised an eyebrow at him. They really didn’t hate each other anymore, not after the time they’d been spending together. Charles rather liked him, actually. He was looking forward to finally playing against him in a real match. 

The two of them were projected onto the screen, facing each other in what probably looked like a standoff. Charles picked up on chants of the word  _ fight _ in a few languages coming from the stands all around him, and some of his teammates calling for him to  _ hurry up  _ even though he didn’t really know what he was supposed to be doing in the first place. Suddenly he had an idea. A really stupid, Erik-may-never-speak-to-me-again-after-this idea. 

Amid the stomping and endless demands of  _ fight fight fight fight _ he turned to smile at the camera like he always did, and then he turned back to Erik, pulled him forward with his hands on both sides of his face, and planted a kiss on his cheek. 

The crowd went insane. 

He caught eyes with Erik, later, as they lined up across the field from each other. Erik gave him a small, private sort of smile that Charles didn’t think he had seen before, and Charles beamed back at him. 

And then he totally got his ass handed to him on the field. 

 

-

 

After the first match, Charles hadn’t been able to stop himself from looking to see if someone had posted the video clip. He instead found a multitude of videos and gifs and images, mostly centered around Erik’s face the second he had registered the kiss. It was adorably innocent in a way Charles could never imagine on a man like Erik Lehnsherr, his eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead, eyes wide and lips parted in surprise. Only a few seconds later did he start to laugh and wave at the cameras before he ran back to join his team. 

Charles saved the full video of it to his computer, just in case. 

 

-

It became a tradition, naturally, at least for the few more games they had against each other. Before every match the two of them would be pushed in each other’s direction and broadcasted on the big screen, everyone eager to see the two of them interact. Charles continued to make the coy little smiles that Erik could never pull off with dignity, standing on his toes to plant a chaste kiss on Erik’s cheek before the match started. For some reason it never seemed to get old for their fans.

Questions were still thrown at Erik every time he stepped outside of the stadium or the hotel, all of which were about his “bitter rivalry” with Charles. At the very least he was able to keep himself from laughing at the idea, but he could never think of a good way to respond. Instead he defaulted to his usual apathy, refusing to acknowledge the microphones shoved at his face or the people with their cameras desperately trying to get a good angle. 

At one point he was in the general vicinity to witness the same thing happening to Charles--he was on his way into the hotel lobby and Charles on his way out--and he really admired the man for the fact that he still had the energy to smile at every camera and ask for people’s names and sign autographs. 

“Do you think I’m an asshole?” He asked Charles later that night, comfortable in the shadows of the practice field. They had been passing the ball back and forth quietly for a few minutes. Charles raised an eyebrow at him, and then dribbled the ball between his feet in a manner that was actually pretty graceful. Erik remembered that he had taught him that. 

“Well, yes.” Erik frowned, almost missing the ball when Charles passed it back. “But it works for you.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean, I could never pull off the kind of attitude you sport in public. With you, on the other hand...” Charles could probably tell Erik wasn’t paying attention to the ball anymore, and kicked it effortlessly into the goal behind him. “With you it’s quite becoming.” 

Erik squinted at him. 

“Maybe it’s just the haircut.” Charles shrugged before jogging across the field to retrieve the ball. 

“I thought you didn’t like my haircut.” Erik called after him. 

“Oh no. I do. Although you definitely copied it from Ronaldo.”

Erik scoffed. He stole the ball out from Charles’ feet in retaliation and it set the two of them running down the field in pretend competition. Erik couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off of Charles, off of the way he laughed when Erik outsmarted him, the compliments that always seemed to pour out of his mouth and the flashy grins when he tripped and fell and tried to play it cool. 

He wondered if Charles acted like this with everyone, which, realistically, he probably did. He wondered if there was a part of Charles that no one else knew, if he would ever get see something that half of the world didn’t see on twitter and television and newspapers, a face that was unrefined, or a smile so full of emotion that it didn’t look like he practiced in front of a mirror beforehand. He wondered why he was even thinking about that. 

Rather than try and figure out whatever the hell he was feeling when he looked at Charles, Erik decided that he would just channel all of it into beating his ass on the field. He always knew his tendency to misplace his aggression would come in handy someday. 

Also Charles made a really cute pouty face when he lost. But that had nothing to do with it. 

 

-

 

A lot of the newer guys on the team were upset about Arsenal not making it past semi finals, but Charles had been playing with Arsenal long enough to know that the fact that they even made it to semis in the first place was a miracle. 

Plus he got to sleep in the morning after their last match. 

Charles got out of bed around noon. He stood under the shower for a good half hour, was looking at himself in the mirror afterwards, at the accumulation of scrapes and bruises from the past few days, when he paused.

He hadn’t gone to the practice fields last night. 

The thought hadn’t crossed his mind, since he didn’t have to play the next day, but Erik might have been expecting him. Of course, Erik probably knew that his team had lost. He knew Charles didn’t need to play today, so he didn’t really need to practice. Maybe Erik didn’t wait around for him to show up.

But maybe he did.

_ Why am I even worried about this?  _ Charles leaned on his hands against the bathroom counter. He brought his face closer to the mirror, stared into his own eyes. He saw, for a split second, something shift, until he was seeing not his own, blue eyes but a pair of grey, steady, intense eyes. Erik’s eyes. 

“Stop that.” He said to himself. He shook his head, pushed off of the counter and went to get dressed. 

He met up with a few of his teammates in the lobby to get lunch before heading to the stadium, so they could at least  _ look _ like they all cared about the matches being played today. 

Janos (from Portugal, and the youngest on the team at 19 fucking years), came up to him. He looked awkward, as if he was about to have to say something upsetting, but Charles greeted him with a smile anyway because it had become a curse, really.

“Uh, that guy from Munich cornered me in the lobby this morning.” He said. 

“Lehnsherr?” 

“Yeah, maybe.” Janos shrugged. “I don’t know. He was asking about you.”

“Damn it.” Charles mumbled to himself. So Erik had probably been expecting him last night. And Charles didn’t show. Damn it. 

“Anything else?” He asked. Janos shifted uncomfortably. 

“Well he said that if you don’t show up tonight he’s going to come after me.” 

Charles sighed, pressing his fingers to his temple rather than all-out facepalming. Poor Janos was only 19, already getting death threats from terrifying players like Erik Lehnsherr. There was a rush of nerves through his head, though, because Erik was asking after him. Maybe Erik missed him. 

He remembered that Janos was still standing there, exhibiting a quite reasonable level of fear for his life. 

“It’s fine. I’ve got it. Don’t worry about it.”

Right before they started walking out of the lobby Janos turned away and muttered something about  _ weird taste in men _ and Charles whipped his head back up. 

“Wait, what the fuck.” 

But Janos had already slipped into a conversation with someone else, leaving Charles trailing behind the group of them and wondering if it actually seemed like he was into Erik. Or if Erik was into him. Or both. Or fuck. What the fuck. 

 

-

 

So Charles went to the practice fields again that night, or, technically, the next morning. If anyone had asked he would have said he was just making sure that Janos wasn’t on Erik’s hit list, but in reality it was because he had spent almost the entire day thinking about Erik. And thinking about Erik thinking about him. And also, occasionally, hating his entire self. 

Erik smiled when he showed up, which was terrifying and endearing and stressful and Charles was barely able to make himself talk to the man. 

“Hey.” Charles said, suddenly hyperaware of how alone they were, the only two people in the complex. “Good morning.”

“You got my message?” Erik asked. His arms were crossed over his chest while he stood tall in his all-black practice gear. Charles wondered why he hadn’t noticed before how tall Erik was. And how pronounced his biceps were when his arms were crossed like that. And how he probably should not have shown up if he was going to keep noticing these things the entire time. 

“Yeah. And I’d rather appreciate it if you didn’t terrorize my teammates.” 

Erik scoffed. 

“He’s just a kid.”

“Exactly!” Charles exclaimed, but he ran down the field all the same, chasing after Erik and the ball and mostly Erik. 

He tried to let it be normal, like it had been before Charles had screwed everything up for himself. But faking it became more and more difficult as Erik got more sweaty and beautiful and Charles got more tired and Erik started to totally kick his ass without even trying. Eventually Charles just gave up, chest heaving, and flopped onto the grass. 

Erik clicked his tongue and laid down next to him. 

For a while the only sound in the air was the two of them panting out of rhythm of each other. Charles didn’t let himself look; he didn’t let himself look over at Erik laying down less than a foot away. But jesus christ did he want to. 

“You coming to my match tomorrow?” 

“We’re probably going to go, yeah.” 

Erik lifted himself up, leaning on one elbow, and really, it would have been rude if Charles continued to  _ not _ look at him. His hair was falling over his forehead, cheeks flushed and still breathing with his mouth open. 

“I can get you down onto the field it you want.” 

Charles just barely caught what he had said, for obvious reasons. 

“Oh.”

“Yeah. But just you. Otherwise I’d get in trouble.”

“I was under the impression that getting into trouble isn’t usually a concern for you.”

Erik smiled that same private smile, looking down at the grass. 

In the end Charles agreed, because of course he fucking did. 

He wondered if he could get away with kissing Erik on the cheek again, even though they weren’t playing together. If the cameras caught him on the field they would probably be demanding it anyway, he figured, and that was good enough for him. Really he just wanted to touch Erik. That seemed to be all he wanted. There was no point denying it now. 

 

-

 

Erik sent Emma a text once he got back to his hotel room that said  _ How much trouble would I get in with the manager if I kiss Charles on the mouth when they put us on the screen tomorrow? _

Emma texted back in about two seconds:  _ You’ll get in worse trouble with me if you don’t. _

-

 

Erik told Charles to meet him outside of the changing rooms before the match. When he showed up Charles was already there, leaning against the wall and wearing a Criminal Damage tracksuit. He made sure that Charles saw him rolling his eyes. 

“It’s actually quite comfortable.” 

“So is the money they’re paying you to wear it.”

“Oh, shut it.” Charles followed him out to the field, and Erik could feel his heart speeding up as the noise of the stadium started to surround them. Before they stepped out of the tunnel and onto the field he paused. 

“By the way.” He bent over so Charles could hear, which put their faces dangerously close together. The rest of the words tumbled out before he did something stupid like kiss Charles now instead of later. “They might want you to kiss me on the cheek again if they see that you’re here.”

“Oh.” Erik pulled away and saw the flush in Charles’ cheeks, watched him chew on his lower lip for a second. So everything was in place, then. 

He (reluctantly) had to leave Charles on the sidelines for a little bit while he joined his team. There was a lot of laughing when the lot of them spotted Charles, because  _ of course _ he showed up. Erik wasn’t stupid; he knew they’d started a betting pool.

And, almost on cue, somebody grabbed his arm and dragged him towards the closest camera. The cameraman waved at Charles until he rolled his eyes, blushed again, and walked over to them. Erik thought he looked to gorgeous and too beautiful and too stupid in his stupid fucking gorgeous expensive tracksuit. Once they were in frame the feed went up on screen and the already loud stadium got louder.

This was, more than likely, Bayern’s last match. Erik was betting on it. That made it easier to do something stupid. 

Something stupid like, wait for Charles to move towards his cheek, turn around, grab his face with both hands, and kiss him straight on the mouth like he’d wanted to for so long. Charles gasped into the kiss and Erik laughed and they had to pull away a second later but it didn’t really matter. Everyone in the stands lost their minds over it, and really, so did Erik.

Erik thought about the kiss through the entire match. He thought about the fleeting softness of Charles’ lips, the little noise of surprise that he’d made, the shock and happiness and desire so clearly on his face as he pulled away. 

He figured, fuck it, they were already doomed. Erik kept looking back at Charles, smiling at him, at one point he might have winked. Charles grinned stupidly back, and there was the face he never saw in photos or interviews. That was something that only happened when Charles looked at Erik. 


End file.
